Chapter 41 #2
Flashlight turned off, I started off at a run but quickly winded down.
What if there were more of those spiders deeper into the plantation?
I shuddered. I patted my sweaty forehead with my arm.
My lips cracked more and more with each pant of the humid air.
Something rustled nearby, small and too close.
Yeah, no. I turned around and jogged back out of the banana field, careful to circumvent the second man and the beacon of his flashlight.
I huffed through the dryness in my throat. These men had to have some water in their car.
The car wasn’t much to look at, with a white nondescript exterior, slightly dented around the front bumper, scratched along the body, and spotted with mud. The interior was just as bland and utilitarian. Either my abductors were low on cash, or they were trying to blend in, wherever we were.
Their keys dangled from the ignition, and in the center console were two water bottles.
My saving grace. I downed the first one in seconds.
The warm water coated my throat like a soothing balm, but it was over too quickly.
Even as the last drop dripped into my mouth, the thirst remained.
A drop of water trickled down my chin. I caught it and sucked it off my finger, glaring at that tempting second bottle.
The water sloshed up the sides of the plastic like a taunt, but I twisted my head away. I might need it later.
A violent streak of lightning sparked. It lit the road up ahead and behind me. Both ways were surrounded by unending banana stalks, and only one car could possibly fit at a time. Avoiding the direction these men were taking seemed my best bet, but even that was only a guess.
Thunder roared, only two seconds now separating it from the lightning. The air grew impossibly thick, and all the bug chirps I hadn’t noticed before stilled. I wiped more sweat off my forehead, and still more poured out of me.
The question begged: Where was I?
Tropical weather and temperatures in November weren’t typical far north of the equator, and banana plantations…
I was pretty sure those weren’t native to the United States.
I knew France imported their bananas from countries in Africa, South America, and the French Caribbean, but only South America made sense in this situation.
Colombia, in particular. Sosa’s home base. I tugged at my hair. Well, shit.
As the first drops of rain hit my skin, a distant car engine grumbled. A blur of light glowed around the bend in the road behind me.
I didn't debate my course of action any longer. I dropped into the sweat-drenched front seat and drove in the same direction my captors had been headed. In short order, heavy rain crashed down and hazed out the road. I squinted through the blur of the windshield wipers.
Somehow, the car behind me was gaining. They still weren’t visible in the rearview, but the blur of their headlights engulfed the entire mirror. They could be Sosa’s men.
Small dirt offshoots branched off the main road, too narrow for a car.
Even if I tried, the car’s white exterior would give me away in one glance.
The rain was blinding, and my heart thumped in my ears.
I twisted and turned in my seat, seeking somewhere to pull over quickly, and tapped the steering wheel one-handed. Think, Alizé, think.
At the next dark offshoot, more a walked path than anything else, I took my chance and whirled the car into it.
The car suspension jerked and bounced over the uneven terrain.
Mud splattered over the windshield. The bumper crushed through a banana stalk on the right, and a heavy thud landed against the roof.
My jaw clenched tight, I held the shaking steering wheel in a death grip, but the car pulled hard to the left anyway.
Banana stalks hit from every direction, smacking the windshield and pummeling against the doors, until I took my foot off the accelerator and pushed on the brakes.
The car jolted to a stop. Immediately, I switched off the lights but kept the car running.
Only then did I draw in heavy, strained breaths that wheezed through the unnaturally humid air.
Seconds ticked by, then minutes. No grinding squeal of tires followed.
No voices came. There was only the boom of thunder and the drumming of this dreadful rain against the roof.
It pinged onto the windshield and trapped me within the car’s stifling heat.
With the risk of those spiders and whatever other critters out there, I kept the windows firmly shut. I’d rather deal with the heat compared to those things.
Holding the flashlight between my teeth, I cut my sleeves off with Cillian’s knife and turned my pants into shorts. A few nicks in the process were nothing against the relief of air against my clammy skin. I drank half the water from the second bottle, then settled back in my seat.
Now it was a waiting game. Hopefully, either Cillian somehow miraculously guessed where my captors took me, or Franc happened to turn on my tracker, realized I was nowhere near where I should have been, and alerted my brother.
Until then, I was on my own, in a foreign country I’d never visited, surrounded by deadly spiders and potential cartel members, with barely any water and no food, and only a curved knife, a few vials, and a blade the size of my thumbnail in my bra for protection. Just lovely.
Either way, in the morning, I’d figure things out the best I could.